Thursday, January 31, 2008

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen/ Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen/ But do you recall/ The most famous reindeer of all?

Seriously, people, if I know the names of all the un-famous reindeer, under what circumstances do you imagine I would suddenly forget Rudolph? Cheating for an easy rhyme.

I had the same problem with Jim Cuddy. He wrote a song called "Married Again" that we played over. and over. and over. again. You know, local musician, not too much cussing, famous, it's the perfect formula for retail. I digress. The point is this line from the chorus:

Sixteen bottles and a wedding trunk/ Oughta be a law against marrying drunk

It made me insane.

In order to marry, or to enter into any other legally binding contract in Canada, one must have the capacity to give consent, which, dude, if you're that drunk, you don't. So in effect, there is a law. I was greeting at the front door during the Christmas rush that year, and Jim Cuddy actually came in. I had to restrain myself from shouting "There is a law!" while shaking my fist at him. When I told Steve about this, he said

"So...let me get this straight. Jim Cuddy comes in and your first impulse is to yell at him.""Yes.""And you're okay with that.""Yes."

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

This post is links-a-go-go, I know, but they're all worth clicking. I swear.

Remember my complaining about Cassie Edwards? Cassie Edwards, star perpetrator of racist tropes in romance novels such as Savage Arrow, Savage Darkness, Savage Paradise, Savage Lies, Savage Wrongs, Savage Touch, Savage Glory, Savage Wind, Savage Storm, Savage Wonder, Savage Obsession, Savage Innocence, Savage Promise, Savage Quest and Savage Haircut*? You may or may not have heard around the blogosphere that she's embroiled in a plagiarism controversy. To wit: she plagiarized. Does the romance-reading public care? Will her publisher do anything about it? Did she actually write the incredibly poor defense of her work published on MySpace, or did she have to rip that off too?

You can read the whole story on the Smart Bitches website (a must-visit in any case), and I also encourage you to check out this story from one of the writers whose work she stole. Because ferrets + hot sex = meh?

*I regret to inform you that the last title is the only one I made up.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Maybe it's just the long, long, long string of days with little to no sunlight. Maybe it's the realizing that there were a few key things that I thought were going pretty well which it turns out I have Seriously Fucked Up. Maybe it's the being sick. Maybe I'm just gonna live a very long time and it's my quarterlife crisis. (That's great, eh? We extend the human lifespan and it just provides more opportunities for freakout. And the first one of you to give me that bullshit proverb about the character for "crisis" and the character for "opportunity" being the same in Chinese gets a withering glare and a chocolate bar. What can I say? I have ambivalence.)

I have ambivalence. I have ambivalence, in fact, about so many things that I find myself looking forward to things I hate because at least then I know.

This is the thing, I suppose, about having a comprehensive worldview. When it takes a nosedive, it tends to do so comprehensively. I'm babbling. Look, the crux of it is that everything I'm doing now is about sticking with something--my marriage, my job, my friendships. And I certainly don't mean to imply that there's anything bad about those things; in fact, the opposite. I have found a life that holds deep value for me, things I want to stick with. What I am coming to realize, though, is that I have very few sticking with it skills. I can look back over my life, and see that every five or six years I throw everything in the air and shoot it full of holes. I have several very, very patient friends who have got the knack of waiting for everything to land again and then telephoning. I am very, very lucky in this regard. But what do you do when you have a life you're not interested in throwing away?

In my case, sit and have a good long look at the things I ought to have done differently if I wasn't going to scrap the lot. And think about that. Perhaps a bit too much.

Friday, January 11, 2008

"If you have anything of any importance to tell me, for god's sake start at the end."-Robin McKinley

spook is mostly okay. He's sore and unhappy, but he's back at work, and he's going to be all right.

On Wednesday night he woke me up by saying my name. It was pretty late; he'd been out and I'd been asleep for a couple of hours. I could tell something was wrong, but I was still sort of swimming up from sleep, and he had to say my name again. I sat up.

"What? What is it? Are you okay?"

One of us turned the lights on, and he sat down on the edge of the bed. There was blood on his face and shirt, and one of his eyes was swelling up. I must have been staring, because he said "I got beat up," and I, full of first aid training, promptly burst into tears.

Yeah, I wasn't impressed either.

He told me the story while I sponged blood off his temple and upper lip and sobbed: he was walking home, there were a couple of guys behind him, he turned up a street to get away from them. They followed him. When he cut across the park to get back to a busier street, they hit him, muttering something about fags to each other and laughing. "It was sort of like getting beaten up by Beavis and Butthead," he said wryly. No, we didn't call the police. He didn't really see them and no one thought that 'a couple of white guys in hoodies' was much of a description.

You know that song 'Today I Hate Everyone'?

p.s. Expressions of sympathy are welcome, but spook does not wish to talk about it right now--please do not ask him. Your love is the important thing.

Friday, January 04, 2008

After much reviewing of my goals for 2008, I think that pretty much sums it up.

I have lots of sub-goals: take a social dance class with spook, give boxing a try, work on the new Excel system for conquering the universe with book orders, get pregnant. But get your ass on the dance floor seems to capture the spirit of what I'm wanting to do this year.

(An aside: I know half of you are thinking "Wait, 'get pregnant' is a sub-goal? Seriously?" Yes. Seriously. Although I did consider "Knocked Up 2008!" as an alternate heading for this blog entry, and it is one of the more consequential goals I've ever set for myself, it does tuck itself neatly into the less talk more rock model I'm envisioning for this year.)